Because of the very narrow demographic niche of “Performance Approaches to Shakespeare,” I opted to self-publish. The book is aimed toward middle and high school English and Theatre educators and directors as well as for potential use as a college textbook in an “Intro to Performing Shakespeare” course. It isn’t the kind of book people might randomly search for on Amazon or Barnes & Noble unless they had an interest in performing Shakespeare. That is why it is not available on those websites…yet.
(Also, by self-publishing, we are able to order just what we need for, say, classroom use, theatre training. and educator workshops without having to purchase a huge amount of inventory and then having to store it.)
Word-of-mouth is really the best way to market this book, so I am working hard to reach out to English and Drama teachers at the secondary and post-secondary levels within a 300 mile radius. I’m hoping to spark interest and possibly set up a one-on-one visit to talk about the instructional value this book can offer in both the classroom and rehearsal space. I am also contacting many theatre companies, especially those which have youth and educational programming.
Whether you’ve been teaching or directing Shakespeare for years or are just starting off with “Romeo and Juliet” in your curriculum, veteran as well as beginning instructors and directors can benefit from the contents of this book as I can personally attest. I went into grad school thinking I knew a thing or two about Shakespeare’s plays. The learning curve was steep when I discovered that there was much, much more to what and how Shakespeare wrote than simply telling a story. The there are valuable performance indicators to be discovered beneath the surface of a basic literary approach.
I hope that by purchasing your own copy of this book you will be surprised and delighted with what you can learn about how the nuts and bolts of Shakespeare’s performance-based writing style is every bit as important and informative than you ever imagined. That being said, I want to be sure that anyone interested in ordering “Performance Approaches to Shakespeare” either in spiral-bound paperback or ebook can find it in the lulu.com store:
Performance Approaches to Shakespeare 